1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to communications networks in which there are one or more transaction processing terminals that may require servicing or maintenance. A transaction processing terminal, or transaction terminal, may be a self-service terminal such as a transaction kiosk, an automated teller machine (ATM) or other cash dispensing terminal, a self-service checkout terminal or a retail point-of-sale (POS) terminal.
2. Description of Related Art
Such terminals are commonly required to operate under extreme service conditions. Twenty-four hour availability can be extremely important to transaction terminals, such as through-the wall ATMs, which continue to operate after normal banking hours. This is compounded by the move towards off-site ATMs that are located in retail locations and petrol stations, where access by the on-site staff may be restricted for security reasons. Within the retail environment, POS terminals are required to operate reliably in many diverse locations from large supermarkets to small retail locations.
These systems can fail to operate due to two basic types of error. Firstly, hardware and system failures, and secondly failures caused by consumable media. The mechanical transports within ATMs that allow media (e.g., currency, tickets, receipts, cards, etc.) to be moved around may fail due to jamming by bad media. Cards can jam in the card reader, currency can jam in the dispenser transport, and receipt paper can jam within the printer mechanism or its external transport. Such critical errors can immediately take the terminal out of service and require immediate actions to be taken to recover the situation.
Point-of-sale (POS) terminals can have similar hardware failures such as receipt paper jams, cash drawer release failure or the failure of support systems such as scanners or weighing scales. While an operator may run the traditional POS terminal, the operator may not be trained or authorized to perform repair operations and may need to call for assistance when a failure occurs. New forms of self-service checkout terminals (SSTs) being developed integrate some of the functions of an ATM with a POS terminal. This type of unattended system can suffer the same critical failures as may be experienced in a more traditional POS terminal or an ATM.
The consumable media within an ATM, a POS or an SST terminal include currency leaving an ATM and entering a POS terminal, receipt paper, tickets and cards. There are situations where cards are captured by ATMs or currency is purged during a dispensing process. There may be a limit to the capacity within the capture and purge bins which requires the bins to be emptied as they approach the capacity limit. Similarly, when an ATM has a depository accepting envelopes or checks, the corresponding capture bin must be periodically emptied.
Within the POS terminal, where currency is entering in large denomination notes and leaving in smaller denomination notes and change, there are times when the mix of currency in the cash drawer is unsatisfactory to meet the transactions being processed. It may be necessary for the operator to call for assistance to re-stock the cash drawer with an appropriate mix of currency.
Clearly, critical failure resolution and consumable media management are important issues for ATM, SST and POS terminals. A number of techniques exist which attempt to address these issues. The larger retail stores often use a loudspeaker system to allow the operator to call for assistance. This could be in response to some critical situation such as a receipt paper jam where the customer must wait for the problem to be resolved. It could be in response to running low on low denomination currency where the customer may be given an undesirably large amount of small change. Either situation undesirably inconveniences the customer.
Where the terminals are included in computer systems, application programs may be used to monitor the operation of the terminal devices (e.g. the printer) and the consumable media (e.g. low supply of the printer paper) to predict potential failures. On stand alone terminals appropriate messages may be displayed to the user on a user display or to an operator on a specialized operator display. However this still requires that someone regularly checks the terminals to read the displayed messages and it poses a problem for off-site locations in regard to nominating someone to check the terminals.